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Industrial Emissions Directive

Overall state of play:

Evaluation finalised in 2020, SWD(2020)181, 23 September 20201
Commission proposal adopted on 5 April 2022, COM (2022)1562
Legal act pending in legislative procedure

State of play, main conclusions, outlook

The Industrial Emissions Directive (2010/75/EU) covers around 50 000 large industrial installations and livestock farms across the EU, and regulates in an integrated manner emissions to air, water and land, and the processes associated, via a “Best Available Techniques (BAT)” approach.

The evaluation finalised in 2020 assessed how the Industrial Emissions Directive has worked to date, including: the identification of BAT; whether it has the correct scope; and whether there are aspects that might need to be improved with regards to the Directive's effectiveness, efficiency or coherence with other EU legislation. The evaluation found that the Directive generally performs well as originally designed, and that it provides significant EU added value, since it ensures EU-wide consistent requirements to reduce industrial pollution, and to monitor and enforce these requirements, thus reducing internal market distortions. However, the evaluation also identified a number of areas for improvement.

Building on these findings and on the new policy ambition set in the European Green Deal, the Commission has prepared and adopted proposals to revise both the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (EPRTR) supported by a comprehensive impact assessment3.

Estimated savings and benefit:

While it is difficult to compare quantitatively the costs and benefits associated with the Industrial Emissions Directive, stakeholders perceive the costs as small when compared to the EU-wide added benefits, especially considering that the preparation of the Best Available Techniques Reference (BREF) documents is a highly technical process, which demands EU-wide and international expertise to remain up-to-date.

Extensive consultations undertaken with industry and agricultural sectors, with environmental civic society NGOs, Member States’ competent authorities and ministerial representatives, academia and individuals have shown that stakeholders widely and highly appreciate the benefits of the inclusive, thorough and transparent mechanism to develop BAT and BREF documents.

Fit for Future Platform

The Fit for Future Platform adopted an opinion (link) with suggestions on how to improve the Industrial Emissions Directive and its implementation.

Concerning the suggestion on increased digitalisation for the authorisation and control phases, the Commission deems that an EU level common electronic permit is probably not feasible given the diversity of national approaches. However, the Commission proposal puts forward a requirement for a harmonised digital permit summary for which the Commission would establish a common format. Moreover, the IED revision clarifies that the results of emissions monitoring are accessible on-line.

On monitoring provisions, their improvement is included in BAT conclusions and ensuring their consistent application will be discussed as part of the future revision of the BREF guidance.

Building on views from some industrial stakeholders about the burden stemming from the requirement, as formulated by some competent authorities, to produce baseline reports on soil and groundwater pollution, the Platform points to the need for further guidance. The Commission considers that the existing guidance is appropriate. However, the Commission is committed to reviewing the implementation of the provisions on the soil baseline report to ensure better compliance by the Member States.

On the suggestion pointing to overlapping requirements, the Commission considers that the problem is due to the lack of BAT conclusions for some directly associated activities rather than the wording of Annex I that defines the sectoral scope of the IED. Nonetheless, the Commission will consider this issue as part of future BREF reviews.

When it comes to the functioning of the BREF process, the proposal aims at modernisation and improvement of the BREF process, including data collection and processing methods. In particular, the processing of confidential business information (CBI) is the subject of agreements within each Technical Working Group undertaking the revision of a BREF. The Commission proposal provides for establishing clear legal rules on the processing of CBI.

Regarding clarity and harmonisation, the IED’s approach to permitting of individual facilities has proven to be effective, also in light of related provisions such as the definition of operators and the combination of permits. Moreover, the Commission proposal will promote more consistent and proportionate approaches across Member States, i.e. the proposal sets up harmonised rules to assess plants’ compliance with their permits, thereby the IED will promote a more level playing field, and reduce any territorial divergence of environmental performance of industry across Member States.

On the global dimension, both the evaluation and the impact assessment have looked into competitiveness aspects and no significant impacts were identified. The EU’s IED BAT approach is seen as best practice internationally, with many third countries working towards adoption of similar approaches or standards at national level. To support such dynamics, the Commission has posted all BAT Conclusions on the web in all UN languages and is funding an OECD project that organises exchanges of good practices on BAT and publishes authoritative reports that showcase the EU approach.

1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SWD:2020:0181:FIN:EN:PDF

2 file:///C:/Users/kiciama/AppData/Local/Temp/1/COM_2022_156_1_EN_ACT_part1_v7.pdf

3  https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12306-EU-rules-on-industrial-emissions-revision